Aurélie abel

Hi everyone,
we have a 5800m2 property in the south west of France with a slope ranging from 25 to 30% in the field where we would like to establish an orchard or some sort of food forest along the countour lines. We thought swales would be good but I have recently read that they are not appropriate when slope is greater than 15%.
The property is situated in Bardos, 64520 France. Rainfall can be dramatic : https://www.infoclimat.fr/climatologie/normales-records/1981-2010/labastide-clair/valeurs/64289001.html
Average annual rainfall = 1400mm
Max rainfall in one day 100mm
A the moment it is a pasture with 3 small sheep grazing. There is a small woodland on the west side where the main winds come from.
The soil is heavy clay, very sticky when wet, so hard when dry.

UPDATE : I have read that Bill Mollison calls a 50% slope what engineers would call a 100% slope (source : ). My understanding is that our 25% slope represents a fall of 25m vertically for 100m horizontally so the ingeneer version.


compared to

Any thoughts / advice for us to grow fruits there regarding earthworks ? Thank you for your time, very much appreciated !
Aurélie

Hi,
Looking at buying some land and a house at the moment and we found something we like but the house is not good energy wise.
We would love to retrofit it with some solar passive ideas like adding a greenhouse to the house, capturing the winter sun and blocking out the summer sun. The problem is that the house does not have one wall to the south, it is tilted at about  45 degrees: best orientation are south east for the kitchen and living room and south west for bedrooms.
Is it possible to still design and build a greenhouse? Would we need to still make it exactly south?
Would loved to see some examples of retrofitted houses where the orientation was not perfect.
Thank you

Hi there,
We are in a transition where we are looking to buy some land for a homestead but are also thinking of selling products as well in the future. I wonder how much land, as a minimum, I would need to have both a variety of crops for the homestead and some specialists crop to sell. I know it all depends on soil type, how we do it and how much we would like to sell but trying to have an understanding of the land size difference between a homestead alone and one with a selling production area. Our goal is not self sufficient for everything, mainly veggies and fruits.
At the moment we are looking at land around 1500 square meter, house included for the homestead. We could probably find some agriculture land around later on but would we be able to get started on such a small piece of land?
Thanks for some examples or ideas.
Cheers